EARLY WESTERN ZHOU DYNASTY, 11TH-10TH CENTURY BC

Details

A BRONZE RITUAL WINE VESSEL AND COVER, YOU
EARLY WESTERN ZHOU DYNASTY, 11TH-10TH CENTURY BC
The bulbous body is cast on two sides with a small ram's-head boss on a decorative band cast with stylized taotie on a leiwen ground, and the loose over-head handle terminates at either side with an animal-head. The cover is cast with a saw-tooth pattern encircling the sides, and the top with a similar band of stylized taotie on leiwen beneath the plain finial of ovoid section.
8 in. (20.3 cm.) high, wood box

Provenance

F. D. Heastand, San Francisco, before 1956.
Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, 8-9 March 1956, lot 254.

Exhibited

Vatican City, Vatican Museums, 1956-2016.

Lot Essay

Compare the you in the British Museum with similar cast decoration, but lacking the saw-tooth pattern encircling the sides of the cover, illustrated by Jessica Rawson in Western Zhou Ritual Bronzes from the Arthur M. Sackler Collections, vol. IIB, The Arthur M. Sackler Foundation, 1990, p. 517, fig. 72.4, where it is dated to the second half of the early Western Zhou dynasty. The author notes, p. 517, that you with covers flanked by 'beaks' remained popular into the middle Western Zhou, and that many of them are decorated with birds.

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